The amendment, which now needs to be ratified by state
legislatures, has
important potential benefits for the ongoing safety of Mexico's
journalists, the reduction of the country's 90% impunity rate, and press
freedom in general. Attacks
on reporters in Mexico's drug cartel-dominated regions are strongly linked
with attempts
to silence or distort wider knowledge about the corruption and organized
crime; local investigations are frequently hampered by internal corruption of
law enforcement and the suspected involvement of drug lords and prominent local
officials.

There's a wider benefit of Mexico's amendment which has applications
worldwide:It would be one of the first
laws to broadly protect the new types of journalism that are emerging from
online practice, with enough room to catch formats that we cannot even predict.

Defining who and who isn't a journalist in the modern age is
an ongoing challenge for academics and reporters themselves, and the difficulty
of coming up with a stable definition has created serious problems for those
trying to pass journalist protection laws.

In the U.S., for instance, a federal reporter shield law
foundered in part on how reporters
should be defined. Other recently passed laws, such as the 2009 French
Press Protection Act, have struggled to include new media reporters
as well as more traditional reporters. Mexican senators told us that
alternatives to the current Mexican amendment also grappled unsuccessfully with
a useful definition.

The final language of Mexico's amendment empowers the federal
authorities to try any offense "contra
periodistas, personas o instalaciones que afecten, limiten o
menoscaben el derecho a la información o las libertades de expresión o
imprenta" -- "against journalists, people, or outlets that affects, limits, or
impinges upon the right to information and freedom of expression and the
press."

What's useful about this language is that it accepts that
there will always be a central and primary role for journalists (however we
define journalists in the future), but that in attacks on the press, others can
be caught in the crossfire. The Mexican Congress has chosen not to try to
redefine the term journalist, but seeks to ensure that whenever a criminal
mounts an attack on the freedom of the press, the federal authorities can
intervene.

Of course, constitutional amendments are allowed a little
more leeway in their language than the laws and court judgments that spell out
how they should be enacted. And the effectiveness of Mexico's press protections
will depend far more on the secondary legislation and the vigor of its
investigating prosecutors than the letter of the law.

Nonetheless, it's a vital first step that Mexico has devised
language that works for the way the 21st century press operates. Let's hope
that other countries struggling with similar impunity challenges take it up.

San Francisco-based CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O’Brien has worked globally as a journalist and activist covering technology and digital rights. Follow him on Twitter @danny_at_cpj.

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Online news sites as battleground for Mexican drug war

March 7, 2012 12:45 PM ET

I'm in Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Part of my work here has been to investigate and highlight the cyber-attacks that the award-winning weekly local newsmagazine Ríodoce has encountered in its coverage of the violent drugs war here. But discussing the experiences of online editors...